#oneaday, Day 163: You are…

Queen’s Park (on a bench), 9:10pm

You’re sitting on a sturdy, lichen-covered wooden bench that looks like it’s been here for a good few years. The wood is faded and scratched, both naturally and through human intervention. The initials of teenage sweethearts are carved into the surface of the wood, last remnants of a long-forgotten memory, a past romance.

You’re at the east edge of the park. Further east is a tall hedge, behind which stands a tall, orange-and-glass-fronted apartment building.

To the west, a large stone column rises up to the sky amidst brightly-coloured flower beds. Atop the column is an intricate-looking sculpture, featuring roses, arches and what appears to be a Christian cross.

To the south, behind the swish-swish-swish of passing cars, you can just hear the sonorous tone of a ship’s horn signalling its departure from the docks.

To the north, the cars swish past in the opposite direction, this patch of road encircling the haven of green calmness in which you find yourself, the sounds of the passing vehicles your only reminder that you’re in the middle of a busy city.

On the bench is a bottle of milkshake.

There is a discarded coffee cup here. Ants are crawling around the coffee cup.

?>GET MILKSHAKE

Taken.

?>DRINK MILKSHAKE

It’s not open.

?>OPEN MILKSHAKE

You unscrew the cap of the bottle. The scent of chocolate mint, trapped inside the plastic for so long, wafts out and caresses your nose with its sweet yet pungent aroma.

?>DRINK MILKSHAKE

The thick, gloopy milkshake slides down your throat smoothly. The scent of mint wafts through your sinuses.

?>LOOK AT COFFEE CUP

There are ants all over it, crawling in and out. It’s empty, though. What could they see in it?

You feel a little itchy.

?>GET UP

You stand up, and realise the ants have taken a liking to you.

You feel pretty itchy.

?>BRUSH OFF ANTS

You do your best to brush off the ants you can see. Your skin still feels like it’s crawling, but you think it’s just your imagination now.

?>LOOK AT COLUMN

It looks like some sort of memorial, though to what you couldn’t say.

?>CLIMB COLUMN

There’s nothing to grip onto. You’d just slide back down. Unless you were Batman and had a Batarang or a grappling hook or something.

?>INVENTORY

You don’t have a Batarang or a grappling hook. Nice try.

?>SIT

You sit on the bench.

?>THINK

You stare into space and let your mind wander. Thoughts of all the things you want to happen flow through your brain. The people, the places, the events. Things said, things unsaid. Hopes, dreams, regrets. It all rushes through your head like a miasma. It is both pleasurable and terrifying at the same time.

A single tear falls from the corner of your left eye and plops onto the ground silently, its impact drowned by the sounds of the city.

The feelings pass. You’re not sure if you feel any better.

?>GET UP

You stand up.

?>NORTH

You find a gap in the hedge which surrounds the little park, and step back out into the noise of the city at night. It’s like a different world. The bright lights, the blur of the passing cars, everyone going about their business, somewhere important to be, someone important to see.

Except you. What do you have? Where should you go? The answer remains out of your reach… for now, at least.

*** THE END?***

You can RESTART, RESTORE or QUIT.

?>_

#oneaday, Day 162: WTF?

Yesterday, my evening was brought to a screeching halt by the discovery of what happens if you go to Google, type in “2204355” and hit “I’m Feeling Lucky”. (Hint: it’s this.) This particular work of art is evidence of why the Internet is something that no-one will ever be able to understand. Thinking about that animation and trying to explain it is enough to make OMG HEAD ASPLODE.

Couple that with the fact that some people seem to be convinced that the number “2204355” has some sort of significance (a fact which I did some immensely frustrating and unfruitful research on today) and you’ve got yourself a proper mystery. Conspiracy theorists would say that the people who claim to know what “2204355” means but won’t tell anyone really don’t actually know and are just fucking with everyone. It’s entirely possible. I’ve given up thinking about it and just taken to enjoying the dance and the music. CHIKKUN.

Of course, this isn’t the first time that an inexplicable meme has swept the Internet. We’ve had this. And this. And this. Not to mention the many different cats who can do incredible things. And let’s not forget the immortal Keyboard Cat, of course. Fatso may be long dead, but his legacy lives on to bring joy to millions.

Love them or hate them, internet memes like this are here to stay. They appear, explode in popularity virally, get overplayed and generally by the time parents or grandparents start emailing them to you as a .wmv file accompanied by size 18 Times New Roman type in bright pink, it’s time to leave them alone again. But by then, something new will have appeared.

The thing that pops into my head every time I see something like this is “who came up with that… and how?” Who thought it would be a great idea to get a pixellated video of a black dude dancing and eating chicken and combine it with a hypnotic rainbow background and a chiptune version of the theme from A.L.F? Who realised that saying the words “badger” and “mushroom” over and over was inexplicably funny? Why combine a spinning leek with a Swedish folk song? Why are cats so awesome?

These are questions that will never be answered. But for every idiotic, ill-informed, racist, twattish, knobhead dicksplat that you come across on the Internet, remember, somewhere out there there’s someone who will come up with one of these masterpieces of viral pop culture, whether it’s through creativity, insanity or both.

Today, I salute those people. You make the world a better place and can brighten even the darkest of times.

#oneaday, Day 161: Shouting and Screaming

So England went out of the World Cup today. I’m not going to gloat about that, my feelings on football are well-known and well-documented. What I did want to speak about was how the whole experience made me feel as an outsider who wasn’t watching it and could only hear things.

I was terrified. There is nothing else that you hear in relatively “everyday” life that matches the ferocity of someone shouting at football. When it’s the World Cup or even a European tournament and England are involved, you know who’s watching it, because you can hear something which sounds remarkably like a Spartan army blaring out of their living room. Combine that with those stupid vuvuzelas which everyone claims to be playing ironically and you’ve got a not-terribly pleasant noise for a mild-mannered gent such as myself.

Couple this with the sheer rage shown by people over a disallowed England goal (fair enough, from what I could see from reports after the fact) and you have a large proportion of a nation already fond of binge drinking and casual violence set to explode.

All credit, though, after the match happened, I didn’t hear much in the way of shouting, screaming or violence. I didn’t even hear that many police cars go past. That said, the vast majority of the fans would have been further into the town centre, which is a little further away from me. You could not have paid me to walk into town after the match had finished. Maybe I wouldn’t have been assaulted, shouted at or anything. But it’s a risk that I wasn’t willing to take.

Several thousand miles across the Atlantic Ocean, anarchists are rioting in Toronto. Canadians don’t riot. They certainly don’t set fire to police cars and smash shit up. I can’t even begin to imagine how frightening the experience must be for them if I don’t want to leave my house while a bloody football match is going on. I’ll confess to not having paid much attention to the news for the last few days as I’ve had a huge amount of other things on my mind, so I’m not even entirely sure what the riots are about. I could look it up but it’s terribly late. Whatever they’re about, they’re still fucking riots. Those are never good, right?

It’s been a funny day all round really. It’s kind of passed me by, almost. I wrote my articles from my trip earlier, so those should be popping up online very soon all being well. Suffice to say they will be all over Twitter, Digg, N4G and the Squadron of Shame Squawkbox when they are up.

And then tomorrow? Who knows. Each new day is a mystery right now, a face-down card waiting to reveal whatever Fate is going to throw me next. Technically it’s after midnight now, so I should be able to look at the card. But I tend not to find out what it is until the most inconvenient moment.

God-dammit.

#oneaday, Day 160: Tuesday Tweetup

It was another Tuesday Tweetup today. I know it’s Saturday. But… look, just don’t argue, all right?

It’s always curious to meet these people in the flesh after, in some cases, not having seen them for quite some time and in other cases, never having met them at all. Despite a relatively low turnout, though, it was a good evening in the gorgeous weather at Victoria Country Park. There was picnicking, complete with ant invasions. There was drinking. There were doughnuts. There was flinging a frisbee around a bit slightly half-heartedly. And there was a scavenger hunt around the park, which was good fun, even if no-one quite got the concept that there were some items on the list which weren’t intended to ever be found. A snow globe? In a country park? Don’t think so.

Victoria Country Park is really nice, actually. I’ve never been there before, but there’s a really nice mix of wide open space, foresty goodness and waterfront beachiness. I actually wish I’d taken more photos than I actually have, but never mind eh. I know where it is now, so I can always pay it another visit on an occasion where I’m not expected to be sociable.

It was nice, though. As I’ve said many times before, social situations like that often make me feel all awkward and weird, but the people at this meet? Awesome. Set me at ease completely. It helps that I know a couple of them very well, of course. But I even found myself getting along well with some of the new people. At least I think I did, anyway. Didn’t make that much of a dick of myself, I don’t think!

Anyway, tomorrow will be spent writing, writing, writing as a result of that trip I took the other day. I have lots to do. But it should be good, and hopefully lead on to great new things. Let’s hope so, anyway. Fingers crossed and all that.

Sorry for the crap entry, I’m pretty tired. I’ll leave you with some photos taken with the new iPhone camera so you can take a peep at the quality. The digital zoom is blurry and crap, but digital zooms always are. The regular pics are pretty damn sharp, though – I’m impressed.

#oneaday, Day 159: Obligatory New Phone Gushing

I picked up an iPhone 4 today. Cheap, too, thanks to the contract I went for. I was already on a £45 a month contract, so continued with that and got a new iPhone 4 16GB for £29. Nice. Plus I can recycle my old 3G and get at least £150 for it, so that’ll be good too.

The new phone is absolutely astonishing when coming from the ageing 3G. I’m not sure if it was the OS updates or that apps were just getting more and more sophisticated, but the 3G was really starting to struggle with a lot of things. Even doing simple tasks like sending a tweet were causing momentary pauses, requiring you to wait before it would respond to an input. Some apps were better than others, but unfortunately some of the apps I was using most frequently were the most severely affected.

No such issues with the 4. While I was waiting in the queue at the Apple Store, a former colleague came up to me and showed me how quickly apps started on the new phone. It was impressive stuff. It’s noticeable with games, too – I tried out Warpgate earlier, a game which stuttered and juddered all over the shop on the 3G. On the 4, the loading is so quick that it really doesn’t need loading screens any more.

The biggest wow is the screen, though. It really is not an exaggeration to say it is pin-sharp. You can’t see the individual pixels. Unless you look really, REALLY closely, but then you’re just the guy pressing his nose against his phone. It’s particularly noticeable on text. Everything has a lovely smooth-edged but sharp look to it, which makes text beautifully readable. The high resolution also means that web pages can be viewed zoomed out and still be readable, too.

Gave the camera a brief try tonight, but not a serious one. It certainly seems good, though, and the preview image on the screen looked ludicrously sharp. The flash seems to work well, too, and the iMovie app is neat. Not sure if it’s £2.99 neat, but it’s cool to be able to trim and edit video, including adding stills and audio, on your device. And for a dinky little phone to shoot 720p video? That’s pretty awesome however you look at it.

In short then, it’s great. I haven’t spent a significant amount of time with it yet, but I very much like what I’ve seen today. Those of you still with a 1st gen or a 3G iPhone should definitely make the upgrade. If you’ve got the 3GS, I’d say it’s less pressing, though the extra speed, the lovely screen and the enhancements to the camera are all very nice indeed.

And I haven’t seen any evidence of the “you can block the antennae with your hand” thing yet, but maybe that’s just because I naturally hold the phone in a way that doesn’t cause that problem!

Yeah, I’m an Apple geek. Sue me. If Android had got to me first, I’m sure I’d be a fan. But as it is, I’ve never felt the need to even look at an Android phone. The iPhone does what I need it to, and it does it well. I’m sure Android does some things better; but frankly if that’s the case I’d rather not know!

#oneaday, Day 158: Executive Lounge

Day of firsts today. My first press trip. My first visit to a developer. My first bit of freelancing for a large and well-known video games website. My first trip business class.

Actually, “business class” might be stretching it a bit. Since FlyBe only appear to fly to Scotland in aircraft best described as sheds with wings, “business class” means you get to sit at the front. Oh, and you get a voucher for a free drink and a free snack. However, you don’t appear to get another coupon for the return trip.

You do, however, get to use the Executive Lounge, which offers moderately-comfortable seating and free food and drink. It’s quite nice. Yes, that’s “quite nice”. As in, if I’d had to pay for this trip myself, I wouldn’t have paid the extra.

Yes, this was also my first fully-expensed trip. Nice.

Anyway, I won’t be talking about the thing I went to see today, at least not until I have written the articles I have to write about it. But suffice to say it’s very good, the demo doesn’t really do it justice and it’s a hoot in multiplayer. So you should buy it when it eventually comes out in a couple of weeks.

My flight home has been delayed. This means extra time for free stuff. I’m just starting to feel a bit sleepy now so will probably get a brief bit of kip aboard the plane. Though I’m not counting on it.

#oneaday, Day 157: Sleepytired

I keep promising myself that I’ll do these earlier in the day, but it never quite happens, largely due to other things happening during the actual course of the day that distract me from this whole business that at first glance appears to be a bit of fun but I actually appear to be taking rather seriously if you look at the big number after the word “Day” in the title of this post. *gaaaaasp*

Anyway. Here I am. I have to be up in, ooh, about three hours to catch a flight to Scotland. I haven’t quite made it to bed yet. Whoops. Tomorrow is going to be a busy day, and exciting too.

I’ve never done a “press trip” before. I’m not sure if that’s the sort of thing I should admit in public. But there you go—I’ve never had the opportunity before and everyone has to start somewhere, right? It’s an exciting prospect, though I have to confess to being a bit nervous too. But I’m sure things will be fine. The PR chap in charge of organising the whole day seems to be a decent bloke (Hi, if you’re reading!) and there’s a jam-packed schedule of fun and frolics for everyone to enjoy throughout the course of the day. I am greatly looking forward to the experience, and have my notebook and iPhone’s Voice Memo recorder function ready to go for use as appropriate.

I’m not going to say too much about what I’m actually doing, ’cause I’m not sure how much I’m supposed to say about it. But suffice to say I will be pimping myself out all over Twitter when the stuff I’ve written goes live. And then you will read it. Yes you will. And you will like it. Possibly literally, if the site in question enjoys Facebook integration.

For now though, I had better get what little sleep I can manage, and I’ll be here tomorrow evening, probably shell-shocked, exhausted and wanting very much to sleep for about a year.

It’s nice to have something positive happening. I know it’s only one thing on one day, but it’s a start. And as I said before, everything has to start somewhere. Let’s hope this really is the beginning of the upward slope.

#oneaday, Day 156: Could It Be…?

Today was, I hesitate to say it, a good day. Yes, I woke up a bit late and had trouble getting out of bed before 10AM, but things picked up a bit from there. First thing that happened was a certain website that I’d expressed an interest in freelancing for several months back emailed me back enquiring about my availability. I responded that I was very much available. As a result of a rather lengthy exchange, as it turns out, I’m taking a little trip tomorrow to go and cover something. Further details as events warrant. But that’s very exciting, and could potentially be something of a big break. Let’s hope so.

Then, a little later in the day, I received a lovely Facebook message from someone who shall remain nameless to spare her blushes. She said some nice things about some of the things I’ve written in the past and, as she said in her message, it’s always nice when someone compliments and appreciates your work.

Of course, it wouldn’t be a normal day without something rubbish happening, so I lost my passport and have a horrible feeling it might have accidentally got thrown out with the trash when I cleared out my car of teaching crap the other week. If you’re wondering why my passport was even in my car in the first place, it’s because schools are very strict on seeing official ID when supply teachers turn up. Quite right, too, otherwise any idiot with a beard could turn up and start shouting at children. Still, after some frantic and panicked research, it seems that for domestic flights photo ID in the form of a photocard driving licence is enough to prove you are who you say you are. So that should—hopefully—be all right. If it’s not, then, well, you know what tomorrow’s #oneaday is going to be about! And I will, of course, be applying for a new passport with due haste. Unless it randomly turns up somewhere as these things are wont to do.

I also updated to iOS4 last night. Because I’m still using a 3G, I don’t get a lot of the cool new features that secretly I don’t really care about, like multitasking and a background to my Home screen. I do, however, get folders, and that’s been a godsend. Whereas once I had six pages of apps that were once organised but as new ones were added and old ones deleted gradually got more and more disorganised, now I have one Home screen with everything on it. I tweeted it earlier. I can’t be bothered to go and find the picture again so if you’re that interested in other people’s iPhone Home screens, go rummage back through my Twitter feed for today.

So anyway. Tomorrow and Thursday should both be very interesting. More news as it happens. Or more likely, after it happens. Right now? I am very sleepy after trying to play doctor on someone else’s poor crippled iPhone. We failed in our efforts, sadly, so the fine people at the Apple Store WestQuay are getting a visit from them tomorrow.

#oneaday, Day 155: Waiting for the Awesome

A thought occurred to me in conversation with a friend today. It concerns the structure of one’s life, and how all our lives seem to be a sequence of “big events” with long stretches of abject tedium and/or unpleasantness in between. Abject tedium sometimes isn’t a bad thing; it helps us appreciate the exciting things in life, after all. But the unpleasantness? That I can live without.

These “big events” are what everything always leads towards. And it’s the waiting for them that gets so damn frustrating. Right now, I confidently predict that my next “big event” will be getting a job. This will be closely followed by moving to somewhere I can actually afford that is near aforementioned job. This will be followed by starting said job. From there? Who knows.

There’s also an alternative route, of course. Fail to get job. Run out of money. Get kicked out of house. Turn to life of crime and eating rats. Die in a gutter outside Greggs after being stabbed for small change by someone with more street smarts.

I’m hoping the “alternative route” won’t happen. But it’s a genuine concern, I won’t lie.

It’s these “big events” that define who we are, though. Whether they’re positive or negative has a huge impact on how we feel. My last “big event” was a very negative one and as such I’m still reeling from the effects now. But I’m hoping that’s a signal that the next “big event” will be a good one. And it will be onwards and upwards from there. It’s not an unreasonable assumption, I don’t think, because when you hit rock bottom there’s not many other places you can go besides upwards. And I have been at least taking positive steps to try and kickstart that motion, even if the whole thing is ultimately completely out of my control and will only happen when the great Playhead of Life flicks over into the next bar. Mixing metaphors, I know. But… oh, just shut up.

Despite not being a religious man (despite my primary school’s best efforts) I actually have quite a belief in the power of “fate”, or “Fate” with a capital F if you really want. Some things are supposed to happen. Other things are not supposed to happen. “Fate” is just the sequence of those “big events” happening one after another, leading to an eventual conclusion somewhere. Sometimes we get to make a decision, and “Fate” takes a different path. But sometimes, more often than not, we have to follow the path that’s been set for us. We’re all playing a game of Heavy Rain, in essence. We may take different paths to get to our destination, and sometimes our paths have different consequences, but there’s no cheating the basic storyline of Fate. There’s a beginning. And there’s an end.

It may be something of a cop-out to attribute all the stuff in between the beginning and the end to Fate. And perhaps it’s not. Perhaps we do have more free will than that. But right now, while sitting here waiting and waiting for something wonderful to happen as a result of all the many, many efforts I’ve made to try and force something wonderful to happen? I’m running out of ideas. So if anyone “upstairs” has a grand plan, would they kindly hurry up and get on with it, please?

#oneaday, Day 154: Person Specification

I applied for eleven jobs today. Most of them were in similar fields and required similar skills, but irritatingly, most of them were different enough from one another to demand a different cover letter focusing on different aspects of the “person specification”. By the end of the whole miserable experience I felt like I’d said absolutely everything about myself in every possible way it is possible to say it. Or at least every possible way it’s possible to say it in a way appropriate for a job application. There’s something of an expectation for more “formal” language when applying for jobs, and it’s easy to fall into the trap of babbling on about being “passionate” and “dedicated” without actually really meaning either of those things. I believe I avoided that particular problem, but it’s still a pain to have to “hold back” at times.

So tonight’s #oneaday, then, is my unedited personal statement that isn’t for any employers. It’s for me, and no-one else. Except the last bit. Which is for anyone who wants to hire an awesome person.

I’m Pete. I’m a computer geek, writer and musician, and I also like video games. I stay up late in the evening to work on things that other people wouldn’t bother with because I’m that sort of person. I like working on new projects, particularly creative ones, as the last 154 days of this blog will clearly demonstrate. While working on something that demands consistency rather than quality doesn’t always produce the best results, I think that my dedication to the project as a whole, even when through suffering what I firmly believe is the absolute worst time of my life ever, has been a stand-out example of how great I really am.

I love to write. I can spell, I can punctuate and I can write in lots of different styles. The style I use on my blog here is a conversational one. I sometimes break the rules a bit in the name of humour or characterisation. But I know how to use English properly, too. The other sites I’ve written for in the past each demand very different styles due to their different audiences. Over the years, I’ve written for teenage console gamers (the Official Nintendo Magazine), twentysomething PC gamers (PC Zone), parents with child gamers (WhatTheyPlay), older gamers with a fondness for older games (Good Old Games) and current games enthusiasts who like to stay abreast of what the industry is up to (Kombo). And numerous others besides. I’ve found it pretty easy to adapt my style to each of these sites, and believe that’s another example of me being pretty great, really.

I can play the piano, too. I may not be a proper bonafide virtuoso like some people I know, but I can play things well, with expression and emotion. I can channel the things I’m feeling into what I’m playing, so I can really get the emotions of the music across, with a personal twist. I’m a great sight-reader, too, and can pick up a lot of piano pieces very quickly without having to practice a lot. Okay, if they’re difficult, they might not sound great right away, but they will at least be recognisable.

I can type at 85 words per minute. This means I can churn out writing incredibly quickly, and accurately too. This skill was very helpful during E3 week, when we had to get stories up on Kombo in a matter of minutes in many cases. I managed to hammer out some good quality articles just a few minutes after they happened. This, too, is pretty awesome.

I’m also a great friend. I’m patient, calm and understanding in most cases, but I’ll defend the people I love and the things I care about to the death. I’m a great listener and will always empathise with someone else’s plight, even if I don’t really like them, or even if they’ve wronged me in the past. I’ll never deliberately cause someone hurt or upset because doing so makes me feel bad too. I believe that this is one of my best qualities, and I’d hope that my friends agree.

Generally speaking, then, I’m a pretty good person who has a lot to offer the world. So, basically, if you’re reading this and you need someone awesome on your team, whatever you might be doing (so long as it’s not something pointless and boring) you should definitely hire me and pay me a generous salary and benefits package. And give me a company car.

Because, frankly, I think I deserve all that stuff after everything that I’ve had to put up with. I know my problems pale in comparison to some people – everyone has an example of someone who’s worse off – but speaking purely selfishly, I think, no, I know that I deserve some things to go well. So why don’t you help me out a bit?